Thursday, August 27, 2009

Penultimate

Round 21 found me sitting in AAMI stadium drinking booze with a few of the lads, and watching the Crows decimate the West Coast Eagles by 72 points. This was followed by a bus ride into town (this time we thankfully were not subjected to endless renditions of the rival club song), and more beers at the Rob Roy.

We watched the Port game with a mild trepidation, and drank original recipe cocktails that the Barmaid wanted our opinion on (as she was entering the recipes into a competition, or some shit). At one point Prowse and I became a bit restless so decided to crash the private party in the back bar of the pub. We managed to infiltrate the show for all of about five minutes, when a middle aged woman approached at us at the bar. She mentioned to us that the birthday girl did not recognize us, and then politely requested we leave – and as we got to the door she added as an afterthought ”By the way…Piss Off”.

I eased the pain of social rejection by eating a Haggis and drinking more shitty cocktails, proving a well established fact that if you put something random on your bar menu, I will order it.

The Shogra scores for Round 21:

Western Bulldogs 110Geelong 96

0/15

Carlton 153Melbourne 96

0/15

Adelaide 122West Coast Eagles 48

25/ 25.

Brisbane Lions 107Port Adelaide 92

0/10

Collingwood 97Sydney 56

0/15

Final grade for Round 21 is 31.25%. This has been the worst percentage yet, and it shows – our chances of making the top four have become even slimmer (near impossible), yet the chance of dropping to seventh place is very real. The results of just two games in the next round could cost us our home ground final.

Speaking of which, the next round coming up is the final round of the season and so a Shogra scoring system is irrelevant. Besides, I have spent enough time amusing myself/boring the shit out of you guys with this grading system, and will give it a rest until the later rounds of next Season.

I’ve already designed a new system to put into action for 2010, it involves a combination of Numerology, Astrology, and getting a palm-reader to read the lines in Graham Cornes’ craggy-ass face:

And this picture is from about 20 years ago too.

As for Round 22, there are basically three scenarios that could happen:

Best Case Scenario:

The Western Bulldogs lose by ten goals.The Crows win by ten goals.

This would allow the Crows to take the fourth spot on percentage points, but is highly unlikely.

Middle Measure Scenario

The Crows lose.The Brisbane Lions lose.

The Crows lose, but still retain sixth place for a home ground final.

Worst Case Scenario

The Crows lose.The Brisbane Lions win.

This would allow the Lions to take sixth place, and therefore the home ground final.

Friday, August 21, 2009

And now I will attempt to dissect the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Just kidding. MORE FOOTBALL NEWS!!!

I’m no doubt boring the pubes off you non-AFL fans with these footy posts, but there is only a couple of rounds to go, and then I will STFU for a good few months regarding the sport.

Anyway, Round 20 approached us and so I turned to my email account to chat with the boys on a possible venue. Choosing a pub is a lot harder than you would think, and we have been let down many times by various locations around Adelaide. The Cooper’s Alehouse, for instance, is a pub specializing in our South Australian beer – yet they seem to treat Ausse Rules (South Australia’s favourite sport) with a snobbish disdain. ”We aren’t a football pub” a barmaid once told us, after we requested having one of their five televisions switched over to a Crows game. Meanwhile, their plasma screens showed a combination of Rugby and Golf.

Who the fuck goes to a pub to watch golf?

Besides John Daly I mean, and can we really include that walking heart attack in the consensus? The bastard is so fat that when hookers get on top of him their ears pop. True story.

sexy

I’ve singled out the Alehouse, but there have been many other establishments to turn us away like a pregnant Mary on Christmas Eve. I’m not saying a swanky cocktail bar should switch it’s Music Videos over to Channel Seven so I can ”check the score”. But that sleepy worker’s pub round the corner with the three televisions and fuck all patronage, would it kill them to chuck a bit of footy on for a group of paying customers?

So after getting stung a few times, we were certainly open to suggestions. I was inspired by Stranger’s proposal – he had seen an advertisement for the Elephant, boldly declaring their promise to show every single AFL game. The Elephant was a British pub off Rundle Street, and though Guinness and Aussie Rules was not an obvious combination, it was certainly one that tickled my fancy.

Friday evening was soon upon us, and Stranger, Richo and your humble narrator found themselves with a pretty decent table, sitting in the crowded front bar of the British pub waiting for the game to start.

We thought everything was looking roses as we sipped our Guinness, until we noticed the time and a mild panic started to set in. It was five minutes until first bounce (the AFL’s equivalent of “kick off”), and the TV was showing a Korean Boxing match.

I approached a young barmaid at the bar to assess the situation.

Me: Hi, your ad said that you show any AFL game.

Barmaid: yes we can show any AFL game.

Me: Great, can you put on the Crows game.

Barmaid: yes, we can put on the Crows game.

Me: …uh…can you put it on now?

Barmaid: yes, we can put it on now.

This was followed by an awkward silence as we both stood there staring at each other for about a minute. For some reason my simple request had locked me into a rhetorical battle of wits with one of Batman’s villains.

Luckily (or so I thought) the manager came over to inquire about my problem.

Me: Can we get the Crows game on?

Manager: Sure, what channel is it on?

Me (thinking that maybe their boastful ad had been a crock of shit, seeing how they didn’t even know what channel it was on): Channel Seven.

Manager: Okay, just give me a minute to program the television, it’s only set to Foxtel channels.

Obviously we had missed some kind of small print on the pub’s advertisement. They must have been showing every game, except for the Adelaide ones. After watching the manager try to program channel seven onto the screen for about ten minutes, we decided to cut our losses and head out the pub door and into the heart of the city.

Of course, the problem was that we were on Rundle Street, and there is probably no worse place to be when you have a yearning for televised sport. There were plenty of pubs, just not the ones we needed. The Austral’s bohemian clientele were too busy sipping red wine and discussing Master Chef to concern themselves with football. The great unwashed inside the Exeter were busy comparing tribal tattoos and body odour, and were no doubt unfussed with the Crow’s chances against Hawthorn. The Crown and Anchor could provide us with barmaids with shaved heads and vampire fangs, but could not provide televised sport. It seemed hopeless.

At this point Richo revealed a desperate contingency plan – he had once watched football at the Oyster Bar, a tiny and kind of pricey venue, but one that was close to our current position. We legged it to the bar to find three seats in front of the corner TV, which the bartender was more than happy to put the football on for us.

We had made it just in time to see the Crows get their arses kicked in the first quarter, which thankfully tuned out to be the traditional “Crows sole shitty Quarter” for the game, and they ended up beating Hawthorn by 27 points. Turns out that The Oyster Bar is a decent place to watch the football, and I would happily return.

Google image search reveals this picture for “Oyster Bar”. Funny, I don’t remember it like that.

Although one flaw in my plan was the lack of food (aka “blotting paper”) to absorb the barrage of alcohol. I had planned for a solid steak and chips meal at The Elephant, and swapped that for half a dozen oysters instead. Lack of food on a drinking night is my kryptonite, and it didn’t help when my sister arrived at the bar and dragged me to the Irish pub next door after the game, where we drank until closing.

I awoke the next day in a million little pieces.

The Shogra System grade for Round 20:

HAW 67ADEL 9422.5/25

RICH 59COLL 1520/15

BL 84WB 1020/15

SYD 87GEEL 928/10

PORT 67CARL 1210/10

ST K 108ESS 1107/10

Final Grade is 37.5/85, which is 44.1%. That is the best percentage we have had so far, but still not much of a life changing grade. The score is neither fantastic (we have not made the top 4), nor terrible (we have not jeopardized our final eight chances either), but floating somewhere in between (oh, the ugly grey mediocrity of life. Must you permeate the world of sports also?).

The Crows are now at least three wins clear of the teams vying for a position in the top eight, so with only two games left in the minor rounds, it means the Crows have made the finals.

The see-saw antics continue, as the next games will decide whether the Crows will make the top four (still a slim chance) or failing that, lose the home ground final (by finishing in 7th position).

These are five games that will affect the Crows standing on the ladder, any match involving a team already in the top four will rank out of 15. Any match outside the top four, but vying for a position will rank out of 10. The Crows game will rank out of 25. We want team A to win in each category:

B Western Bulldogs vsA Geelong

Geelong winning would improve our chances of taking a top four spot over the Bulldogs, who are one win ahead of us. If Bulldogs win, and the Crows win their match, then there is still an extremely slight chance we can take that fourth spot. Match will score out of 15.

B Carlton vsA Melbourne

Carlton are neck and neck with the Crows on the ladder, equal on wins but only ahead of us by 2.68%. They could jeopardize our chances for that top four spot. Match will score out of 15.

B Adelaide vsA West Coast Eagles

Naturally, we need to win this and preferably by a large margin. Match will score out of 25.

B Brisbane Lions vsA Port Adelaide

Another one of those freak weekends where you will find me hoping for a Port win. Brisbane could nudge the Crows out of sixth spot (and taking the home ground final away from us, those filthy fucking Queenslanders). If we lose and Brisbane wins, they will leap frog us on the ladder – because they have those two points from the Draw with Essendon up their sleeve. Bastards.

B Collingwood vsA Sydney

If Collingwood lose the next two games (unlikely) and the Crows win the next two, then there is a chance for us to reach the top four. If Collingwood win this game, then the Crows will not be able to chase them next round. Any Collingwood win will give this match a 0/15 score.

For those of you who are still confused by the Shogra System, here is a diagram I created:

Hang on, that’s not it. I must have loaded the wrong JPEG file. Try this:

Damn it, that’s not it either. What’s wrong with the Blogger image uploader? I created this awesome diagram on how the grading system works, and now I can’t get it up onscreen. One more try:

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Round 19 Results

Round 19 waltzed into town, jerked off on our sleeping faces, and then left without so much as a goodbye.

I sat in AAMI Stadium on Saturday night in the cold sipping XXXX beer from a plastic up, and watched the Crows flounder around the oval like a bunch of dying seagulls who had been fed Panadol laced bread by a school yard bully.

I had a bad feeling two minutes into the game that the Crows were having one of their “off days”. Collingwood didn’t play so well either, but they played a damn sight better than the Crows and rightfully took the win. Collingwood beat Adelaide 89 to 68.

My reward for making the pilgrimage to AAMI Stadium was the resulting “Ride of Shame” back to the city centre with Richo, where we got to stand in a crowded bus and listen to the Collingwood Club Anthem sung repeatedly. We amused ourselves by striking up a conversation with a few Collingwood fans about the rest of the season and the resulting finals. It probably comes as a surprise to the foreign readers (especially the Soccer fans) that the two rival fan bases board the same buses home after a game, but that’s just the way it has always been in these parts.

We got off the bus in the city at about 11pm to catch up with mates and drown our sorrows. The venue of choice was the cocktail bar Lotus Lounge, whereby I lined up at the bar for half an hour and paid $34 for four beers (seriously, fuck that place), before we headed off for greener pastures. It had been a tiring week of Sparrow-Fart and Graveyard-shifts at work so I was hoping to have an earlyish night – which of course resulted in me stumbling out of the Crazy Horse at 5 am stinking of Stella, cheap perfume and mild shame.

The Shogra System for Round 19:

CARL 97GEEL 620/10

WB 97WCE 1028/10

ESS 87BL 877.5/10

ADE 68COLL 890/20

FRE 116PORT 7410/10

The Essendon vs Brisbane game was a draw - as a slight Brisbane win was going to rate a 7, and a slight Essendon win an 8, a draw scores 7.5.

Final Grade for Round 19 = 25.5/60, or 42.5%. Which is half a percent less than last week’s result, so, yes, another mediocre weekend of football (as far as the Crows final four chances are concerned).

The peculiar problem with the Crows current position on the ladder (and the overall closeness of the teams standings), is that they still have a chance to make the top four….but also have an outside chance of not making the finals at all.

If you’re not an Aussie Rules fan, then these posts have probably been boring the shit out of you and you haven’t been reading them all the way through. But if you are wondering what all the fuss is about finishing in the final four, observe the following diagram I ganked from Wikipedia:

Finishing in the top four means you play in the first week of finals. If you win, you go straight through to the preliminary final. If you lose, you get a second chance in the semi final.

Finishing in the bottom four is not as advantageous. If you win , you have to then slog it out in the semi. If you lose? Game Over, man. Game Over.

So if your team doesn’t make it in the top for, you at least want to finish in positions 5 or 6. That would mean the first final game for your team would be a home game. The home ground advantage can make all the difference.Wikipedia has more information on the advantage of ladder positions here. Learning is fun.

Losing to Collingwood put a serious dent in the Crows top four campaign, but there still is a slight chance we can do it, though a fifth (or sixth) place is probably the more reasonable goal.

New changes to the grading system for Round 20: the Crows game is ranked out of 25, games that affect our top four chances are ranked out of 15, games that can affect our final eight chances are ranked out of 10. In each case we want team A to win. Team A winning by more than five goals = 100%, two to five goals = 90%, less than two goals = 80%. Team B winning by less than two goals = 70%.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Sam

We’ve had ourselves yet another premature celebrity death, only this time it’s a damn sight sadder than the passing of Michael Jackson.

Sam the koala, mascot of hope during the Victorian bush fires and cherished marsupial here at the Shoddy Blog, was put down on Thursday due to inoperable abdominal cysts brought on by a case of Chlamydia.

A workmate was telling me he heard of the death on the radio, and that the presenter had suggested the koala caught Chlamydia off the water bottle the Fireman had given her. Rest assured this is not the case, urogenital chlamydiosis affects up to 50 percent of the koala population and in Sam’s case the infection had become so severe the vets would not be able to manage the pain.

Judging by “Shock Jock” Kyle Sandilands’ handling of a 14 year old girl’s rape ordeal (which had happened to her when she was 12), I’m unsurprised that there’s a radio presenter out there suggesting our local volunteer fireman are out in the scrub infecting the wild life with sexually transmitted diseases.

Fuck em. I find commercial radio unbearable anyway, hopefully the stations burn down in the next bush fire.

Friday, August 07, 2009

Round 18 results

(I started this post on Thursday, but was so busy last week I had to post it late and back-date it. Shit happens.)

I’ll recap the weekend of footy now, I’m not suffering from the delirium of sleep deprivation this time (like I was last post), so there will be less references to masturbation and vampires, and more honest to god sport.

It was a damn fine weekend of football, with no less than three teams winning by four points or less, including the undefeated Saint Kilda who managed to scrape in a one point win against Sydney in the final 20 seconds of the match.

Yes it was a great session of games for a casual viewer, but not so much as a Crows supporter. A few of the teams we needed to win did not produce the goods, and let’s not forget the Crows own agonizing two point defeat to Geelong. Here are the results, and how they affected my grading system for the round (Good = 8/10, Better = 9/10, Best = 10/10. Anything else scores 0/10):

The final grade for Round 18 is 26/60, which is 43 percent. That’s a mediocre result for the round, and the ladder shows it with the two teams above us winning and growing more comfortable in their positions, and the two teams below us losing and floundering in their spots. This left the Crows stuck in the middle growing stale in fifth place.

Working out these grades revealed some flaws in my system, the obvious one being the score lines (less than two goals gets a grade, as does five or more – but what of the scores in between?). So I have made changes to this system for round 19.

By the way, I have decided to name this collating of data the SHODDY GRADING SYSTEM or the SHOGRA SYSTEM, for short. It’s a catchy name, even though SHOGRA sounds like a giant autistic slug that attacks Tokyo on odd occasions. Actually, the Shogra System sounds like the section of the universe that Luke and Yoda go to pick up whores. Either way, fuck it – the name stays.

ROUND 19

Carlton vs Geelong (Geelong are too secure in points to affect us, but Carlton can still pose a threat to a top four finish for the Crows):

Adelaide vs Collingwood (another change to my scoring system, the results of the Crows game will be rated out of 20, so that it has a greater affect on the overall grading of the weekend. Collingwood are in the fourth spot and one win ahead of us - a loss would put them clear on the ladder by 8 points, so any win for Collingwood ranks a zero in my system):

The outcomes of these matches have no affect on the Crows final four chances, so are not included in the grading system for the round. These matches could be played on mine fields, using a Beach Ball full of wasps, while Pirates rape stray dogs in the change rooms – it truly doesn’t matter.

So does everybody understand the Shogra System?

Does anybody understand?

If you do understand, please send me an email and explain it because I’ll be honest with you I’m fucking confused.

This shit is doing my head in, I’m going to take a break and go watch Flight of the Concords.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

Enough with the Pig AIDS, it's time for SPORT

(If you’re not an Aussie Rules fan skip this next post because it will bore you. Back to regular postings about booze and morning boners next week, until then, I dunno, go read a Twilight novel or something.)

It’s round 18 of the Aussie Rules season, meaning it is not long now until the finals. Saint Kilda is still undefeated at the top of the ladder, with Geelong only two games behind that. Those two teams are pretty much secure in their positions, but it’s extremely close for the next four teams who are all aiming for a third or fourth finish (meaning a double chance in the finals):

And the next four teams on the ladder also have an outside chance of securing a top four position.

It could come down to percentage for a top four birth, so these next five rounds will be a tense battle, like a condom full of bull ants.

As a Crows supporter, this is how I would like to see this weekend’s results: ranked good, better best. Best meaning the least likely outcome, yet the optimal change to the ladder for the crows. I want to see the teams with the threatening percentages lose by large margins, but if they do win I want it to be by a small amount. If you find this confusing, then switch off the computer and go watch Dancing with the Stars.

By the way, I consider “fuck all” to mean “2 goals or less”, “shitloads” to mean “5 goals or more”. (I pretty much just made this whole system up on the spot, so there may be a few creases to iron out. If you have any ideas, fee free to email me at fuckahamster@witchtits.com).

There are two other games this weekend, Sydney vs St Kilda and Melbourne vs Richmond, but their outcome has no bearing on the Crows chances so I have left them off the list.

And lastly, if I am gunning for your team to lose by a shitload this weekend, then I apologise for hurting your feelings, but that’s the tough world of sports. If your team does lose by a shitload this weekend and you find yourself sad, I’ll buy you an Edward Cullen poster to cheer you up. Stick it on your bathroom wall and gaze at it while you masturbate with your shower attachment.